Hermeneutic: A Discussion With JY (or anyone else)

JY writes
My 'hermeneutic', or interpretive approach, is to assume that the works were written by one or more humans to communicate to humans, and that they largely mean what they say. It's fairly straightforward. One runs into difficulty, of course, when you encounter poetic sections, highly metaphorical sections, and so forth, at which point you have to understand what various metaphors mean, which requires understanding things about the period. Nevertheless, it's easy to find plainly written, non-poetic sections of the Bible which contradict other non-poetic, plainly written sections of the Bible.

Approaching a text attempting to prove inerrancy is not honest, if one is already committed to the idea of inerrancy and divine inspiration, because of the ease at which literary 'problems' can be rationalized. The types of justifications that 'rescue' problems in the Bible from being seen as inerrant can rescue any text from such problems. The Bagavad Gita, the Quran, the I Ching, or Moby Dick, all could be approached with the assumption of inerrancy, and post-hoc rationalizations can always be used to 'solve' problems in the text. Ishmael famously declares whales to be fish (in Moby Dick, not the Bible). This is an obvious error. But it's easily rescued by pointing out that the goal of Moby Dick is not to provide information about the nature of whales, but the nature of man, and the whale is being used throughout Moby Dick in a metaphorical sense.

JY - Based on your previous posts, in this discussion I am assuming you to be an educated layman. If you are a scholar please forgive the assumption.

I have only a working knowledge of the Quran and BG. If you have a broader grasp on those documents which conflict with some of the things that I say, please provide the context and reference for rebuttal.

You state that my hermenutic is "not honest" because it leads to "rationalizing" the texts. Not so. The hermeneutic I use is that which seems to me to be that which Scriptures themselves teach are to be employed and here, I again believe, is where we find a major difference with those other texts. To my knowledge they do not present themselves to the reader as do the Scriptures and internally self-validate the proper hermeneutic to be employed in reading them.

The Scriptures self-proclaim themselves to be Divine and hence inerrant/infallible (2 Tim. 3:14-17, 2 Pet. 1:16-21, Heb. 1:1-2). But the Scriptures also self-validate the manner in which they are to be approached in understanding the inerrant / infallible Word they proclaim. What you call "rationalizing" is exactly what the scriptures teach as the approach we are to take in understanding them.

The historical events associated with Sarah & Hagar in Gen. 16-21 are proclaimed by Paul in Gen. 4:21-31 as finding their "full significance" in the covenant relations God now has with Israel (Jerusalem - Hagar) and the Church (The Free woman - Sarah). In Matthew 2:15 we see Matthew explaining that the historical events in Num. 24 as mentioned in Hosea 11:1 find their meaning in the return of Jesus from Egypt. In Luke 24:13-27 Jesus explains to two disciples "all that the Scriptures" (here, the Old Testament) had to say about Himself (cf. John 5:39). Plainly, Jesus understood the main point of the OT corpus to be understood as speaking of Him, His work and the salvation that He wrought. There are other texts, but the point is this: when you say your hermeneutic is that they "largely mean what they say" you are over simplifying the texts. It is not sufficient to stop with what the original author understood the text to mean (though he may have had an idea), the important thing is to understand what God meant the text to say.

Therefore, the literary casting of Scripture is to embody spiritual truths. The manner in which we are to approach them is to understand them in the light of how the Scriptures say they are to be understood. Specifically, in my view, how the Scriptures proclaim the progress of history in terms of Christ and the Kingdom / Salvation which He wrought. To my knowledge there is no equivalent self-attesting hermeneutic similar to this in the BG or the Quran. Certainly there is nothing equivalent to it in Moby Dick.

The effect of this is to recast the historical narratives as literary statements built upon historical events but presented in such a way as to serve the purpose of teaching higher truths. For example, the Gospel of John is a law suit against the nation of Israel (whom John calls "the Jews"). In it you find Jesus furnishing the evidence that God has accumulated against "his own (people)" who did not receive Him (John 1:11). In his literary presentation documentation of this case, John takes 7 specific signs (out of many that he chose not to include, cf. John 2:23, 20:30) and constructs his presentation around those signs, grouping the discourses in such a manner as to produce an irrefutable argument. Now the point is this, John understands that he is perfectly free to present his argument in story form and rearrange historical events in a format suitable to illustrate the points he is making. In modern literary style we would say "take for example, Jesus' cleansing of the temple"... The ancients felt no such compunction to abide by such a strictly precise chronology in presenting their points. Thus John brings the cleansing of the temple to the front of his account and juxtaposes it to the miracle of the changing of wine at Cana - the point: Jesus' mission in the world was to bring blessing (wine of joy) and judgment (temple cleansing) to those who encounter Him based on how they responded to Him.

A further example is the manner in which the genealogical statements are made. In Genesis we see the "begats" presented in sections which are introduced with a "toledot" phrase (a Hebrew word which is translated "these are the generations of..."). This literary structure is obviously self-consciously undertaken. The book is divided up in sections, marked by the "toledot" formula (the first is in Gen. 2:4), which correspond in a literary sense to the "sections" or "divisions" of Gen. 1 wherein God created the world. The point is this- Genesis 1 is used as a parallel or introduction to the main story of how God developed, in stages, the creation of a people unto Himself, out of the chaos of unbounded sin in the world. The lineages using "begat" show the line of this growth but, in my opinion, are not intended to be comprehensive. Some major figures are used to indicate family heads but not every individual who was born is named and not every individual who was an immediate forebear was listed. Just as Jesus was understood to be the Son of David so it can be said that David "begat" him (through Mary, of course).

The most obvious subordination of lineage to literary intentions is that found in Matthew 1:1-17. Speaking to a people who were and still are, very influenced by numerology, Matthew presents Jesus lineage in the symmetrical arrangement of 3 groups of fourteen generations. The combined effect (2 "7's" times 3) presents a numerological teaching of absolute fullness or completeness of heritage. Just as "Holy, Holy, Holy" is the absolute epitome of Holiness, so the three fold heritage of Jesus represents the culmination (telos- Grk) of all that God has done before in bringing Israel into existence. In Jesus the Hebrew nation to whom Matthew is writing has received her purpose in being created. It all funnels down to Him, the Messiah. Matthew wasn't a fool and he had all of the Pentateuch available to Him if he wanted to simply restate it. He had other intentions.

BTW - the lineages in Luke and Matthew being what they are and preserved for us as they are, would mitigate against any idea that there was some massive editing of the text by some monk in the later years. If the purpose of the editing was to remove ambiguities and smooth out "difficulties" in the text, it is inconceivable that this silly monk would have left these as they are. Rather, the text is accurate and was understood by the early church for what it taught rather than as a precise genealogy.

This is not to say that these people were not real people nor that the historical events on which literary narratives were constructed did not happen. I firmly believe in the Exodus and other events. But the manner in which those events are portrayed was cast in a mold conducive to a teaching or communication of truth. It is the task of Biblical hermeneutics to understand that.

Later edit: There is more to be said. This was posted late at night and I just ran out of steam. In addition, it had quite a few grammatical errors. I think I found most of 'em but there may be some more I overlooked.